[V1.0a] Knytt Stories DS

Suggestions heard and written in the code website. However I'll not touch KSDS for a while... hell, I even didn't finish Saira (just two solar systems!!!!!  )

But might I suggest an option to rename the data folder? A lot of other games might use a folder called "Data", so renaming it "KSDS_Data" would be useful.

Actually, the full folder is data/dsknytt. That was an old convention when people suggested to store all the data of homebrew games/apps in subfolders inside the data folder. Anyway, issue stored.

Also, a few aesthetics: first, Juni's icon on the map is too far to the right. (Look at it when you're climbing on a left wall and again on a right wall.) I'd suggest shifting it to the left about two pixels.

Will try my best.

Also, I noticed all the objects are blue squares on the map. Does this count for the invisible blocks, too? That may be a problem on some maze levels or this one "Flashlight" game I remember playing. I haven't played any games with that in it yet (only played the tutorial and The Machine), so I dunno if it does that. I see that the water doesn't do that, though.

Will check it.

Third, in the original Knytt Stories, Juni respawns rather quickly. I kinda like the new death animation and the fact that it's slower, but, on some levels, like TrickJumps or levels that are hard to impossible, you might wanna speed up the spawn speed. Or have it be changeable in the options menu.

OK.

Other than that, you win a . Though I know you got lots already from this. Now if only if someone could port the level editor...

Thanks...but I'll not do the editor, I am finished with Knytt Stories (besides bugs, of course  )

Juni can also moonwalk. ._. Jump, and, in midair, hold down or up. If you keep holding down (or up) when she lands, she'll play her walking animation while still.
Adding on to this, if you hold right or left and then slide to up or down, Juni will continue in that direction and the camera won't follow until you release.

OK, but I like a moonwalking Juni 

One last thing: I miss the ctrl+R and ctrl+S. D: (And I, too, have encountered the ledge-double-jump glitch.)

Ufff... difficult, because it wasn't trivial to allow the player quit the game OR respawn with the "select" button. Will try to think on something

I lied. One last last thing: When Juni pressed down to save on a save spot that's a few tiles above the ground, the screen will move down because of the camera.

OK

One more last last thing: it's really annoying having to convert every single song and ambiance file to MP3. D: Can't you do an in-game conversion, or, better yet, use OGG?

Impossible. The DS cannot use OGG to play games (as far as I know  ), and the conversion in the DS would be veeeeeeeery slow.

I beat The Machine on KSDS, so I tried to install Sky Flower, Gustav's Daughter, A Strange Dream, An Underwater Adventure, and This Level Is Unfinished, and I even converted all the songs by hand (...), but whenever I try to play the game freezes. :U HALPI found the actual ASD expansion pack on the stack, so I guess it's solved (though I don't have Gustav's Daughter), but still, how do I install other levels? AUA doesn't work. D: It freezes when I go to the second screen. This is the one that came from your site, rrc2.

Hmmm... it works in my card. Maybe is because the R4 is too slow... still, try to deactivate the sound, move to the next save spot, and activate the music again. Last time it happened to me something similar with a level (don't remember which one), and the trick worked.

Quote from: Pumpkinbot on February 20, 2010, 18:51:31

But might I suggest an option to rename the data folder? A lot of other games might use a folder called "Data", so renaming it "KSDS_Data" would be useful.

Actually, the full folder is data/dsknytt. That was an old convention when people suggested to store all the data of homebrew games/apps in subfolders inside the data folder. Anyway, issue stored.

Well, lookie that. Problem solved.

Quote from: Pumpkinbot on February 20, 2010, 18:51:31

Also, a few aesthetics: first, Juni's icon on the map is too far to the right. (Look at it when you're climbing on a left wall and again on a right wall.) I'd suggest shifting it to the left about two pixels.

Will try my best.

Awesome. Also, I think its a pixel too low, too.

Quote from: Pumpkinbot on February 20, 2010, 18:51:31

Also, I noticed all the objects are blue squares on the map. Does this count for the invisible blocks, too? That may be a problem on some maze levels or this one "Flashlight" game I remember playing. I haven't played any games with that in it yet (only played the tutorial and The Machine), so I dunno if it does that. I see that the water doesn't do that, though.

Will check it.

Actually, I don't think it does 'cause (most) stationary objects don't do that.

Other than that, you win a . Though I know you got lots already from this. Now if only if someone could port the level editor...

Thanks...but I'll not do the editor, I am finished with Knytt Stories (besides bugs, of course  )[/quote]Yeah, I was just saying somebody. What program did you make it in? I might try to learn enough to do that.

Quote from: Pumpkinbot on February 20, 2010, 18:51:31

Juni can also moonwalk. ._. Jump, and, in midair, hold down or up. If you keep holding down (or up) when she lands, she'll play her walking animation while still.
Adding on to this, if you hold right or left and then slide to up or down, Juni will continue in that direction and the camera won't follow until you release.

OK, but I like a moonwalking Juni 

Quote from: Pumpkinbot on February 20, 2010, 18:51:31

One last thing: I miss the ctrl+R and ctrl+S. D: (And I, too, have encountered the ledge-double-jump glitch.)

Ufff... difficult, because it wasn't trivial to allow the player quit the game OR respawn with the "select" button. Will try to think on something

Ooh! I know! The start button isn't used! We can make a start menu that has "Return to Game", "Respawn", and "Mute/Unmute Music".

Quote from: Pumpkinbot on February 20, 2010, 18:51:31

One more last last thing: it's really annoying having to convert every single song and ambiance file to MP3. D: Can't you do an in-game conversion, or, better yet, use OGG?

Impossible. The DS cannot use OGG to play games (as far as I know  ), and the conversion in the DS would be veeeeeeeery slow.

Actually, this application, Ogg Demo is a kind of decoder (dunno how fast it is or how reliable). Or, you could learn what exactly an ogg file is internally, and then make a script or something to tell KSDS what to do.
...Can't you? I've never used script, so I dunno. x)

Quote from: Pumpkinbot on February 20, 2010, 18:51:31

I beat The Machine on KSDS, so I tried to install Sky Flower, Gustav's Daughter, A Strange Dream, An Underwater Adventure, and This Level Is Unfinished, and I even converted all the songs by hand (...), but whenever I try to play the game freezes. :U HALPI found the actual ASD expansion pack on the stack, so I guess it's solved (though I don't have Gustav's Daughter), but still, how do I install other levels? AUA doesn't work. D: It freezes when I go to the second screen. This is the one that came from your site, rrc2.

Hmmm... it works in my card. Maybe is because the R4 is too slow... still, try to deactivate the sound, move to the next save spot, and activate the music again. Last time it happened to me something similar with a level (don't remember which one), and the trick worked.

I'll try it. How do I deactivate the sound though? Just turn it off from he volume switch on my DS? Or...what?

Yeah, I was just saying somebody. What program did you make it in? I might try to learn enough to do that.

I think it's not much an issue of programming it (I made the Java editor myself, it shouldn't be that hard to make one in C++), but rather fitting everything in the DS's small screen without making it unusable. Given the console's limited resources, it might be even impossible to test levels on the fly.

Ooh! I know! The start button isn't used! We can make a start menu that has "Return to Game", "Respawn", and "Mute/Unmute Music".

Start is used to toggle between screen and map view on the top screen. I miss Ctrl+R too, but I'd say well-designed levels shouldn't really need them: I'd rather have a pause button instead, closing the DS isn't practical for action levels.

Actually, this application, Ogg Demo is a kind of decoder (dunno how fast it is or how reliable). Or, you could learn what exactly an ogg file is internally, and then make a script or something to tell KSDS what to do.
...Can't you? I've never used script, so I dunno. x)

The main reason OGG isn't used on DS is that it takes more processing power to decode compared to MP3, or at least that's what I read. KSDS might not have enough CPU to spare. Regarding that Ogg Demo, I suppose you'd have to downsample the audio files first.

Quote from: Pumpkinbot

Yeah, I was just saying somebody. What program did you make it in? I might try to learn enough to do that.

I think it's not much an issue of programming it (I made the Java editor myself, it shouldn't be that hard to make one in C++), but rather fitting everything in the DS's small screen without making it unusable. Given the console's limited resources, it might be even impossible to test levels on the fly.

Touch screen is the screen you're editing, top screen is the stuff. You can flip between the two by pressing a button. To test, press start and it could save the game, close the level editor, and flip to the actual KS game, and, in the KSDS file itself, add a script: if leveleditor = true (add select menu "Return to Editor") or something.

Quote

Ooh! I know! The start button isn't used! We can make a start menu that has "Return to Game", "Respawn", and "Mute/Unmute Music".

Start is used to toggle between screen and map view on the top screen. I miss Ctrl+R too, but I'd say well-designed levels shouldn't really need them: I'd rather have a pause button instead, closing the DS isn't practical for action levels.

Oh, duh. Well, mebbeh select, then? And add an option for "Quit Game"?

Quote

Actually, this application, Ogg Demo is a kind of decoder (dunno how fast it is or how reliable). Or, you could learn what exactly an ogg file is internally, and then make a script or something to tell KSDS what to do.
...Can't you? I've never used script, so I dunno. x)

The main reason OGG isn't used on DS is that it takes more processing power to decode compared to MP3, or at least that's what I read. KSDS might not have enough CPU to spare. Regarding that Ogg Demo, I suppose you'd have to downsample the audio files first.

Aww...Well, to be nice in my future games, I'm gonna include a .mp3 download of each song in the topic for the game.




[Map Color]
Color=blue
Screens=1000,1000
1001,1000
1002,1000
Color=red
Screens=1000,1001
1000,1002...etc, so we could have colored maps. This would be great for a level I'm kinda making now, where it's split into multiple areas, similar to TMG.

Also, a glitch. It looks like the water (maybe all objects?) needs to be shifted to the right a pixel.

Hi rrc2soft,

thank you very much for this awesome remake. I didnīt know anything about the original game. (so also some thanks go to Nifflas and company)
Knytt Stories DS is now part of my "all-time-homebrew-game-pantheon". (including Powder and Still Alive DS)
I really enjoyed the stories that came with the download(s) and played through them all, fantastic.  

Only had a few freezes while having played for way more than 10 hours, thank god there are always enough savepoints around. (can only confirm freezes on Gaia 1.5  right now [unripped maps, all sounds within sizelimit], about the other freezes, I donīt remember. But they mostly happened when entering the first screen to the left of a new story.)

Some general questions:

How does uncompressing maps affect the gameplay?
- Does it load faster between screens?
and or
-Is it running more stable?
-Is there a way to save the setting of the options in an .ini-file or something? (when playing bigger stories like Gaia I always have to go to the options, to deactivate "uncompress maps", or wait once for about 4 hours :-))


am I right in my assumption, that the uncompressed maps/stories are stored in the "_RAW"-folder? (sooo, can I delete the particular content of this folder after having played through a specific story?)


I ate a mushroom and now I feel sTrAnGe

Regarding planned bugfixing:

Quote from: Pumpkinbot on February 20, 2010, 18:51:31

But might I suggest an option to rename the data folder? A lot of other games might use a folder called "Data", so renaming it "KSDS_Data" would be useful.

Actually, the full folder is data/dsknytt. That was an old convention when people suggested to store all the data of homebrew games/apps in subfolders inside the data folder. Anyway, issue stored.

From my point of view, the solution "data/dsknytt" is perfect. I do not see any problem in it. Sure other Games also use the "data" directory, but thats why there are  subdirectories like "dsknytt", "Powder", "LemmingsDS", "pocketphysics", "dsx86" etc. . Hell, I even wish ALL the homebrew applications would do it, so that my rootdirectory wouldnīt look like a mess.

Iīm going back to play Knytt Stories DS now...,  for the next couple of years.
THX for the effort and endurance man, you are awesome.

edit: cyclo DS v1.56, 8gb sd card (not formatted for some time)

[mod]replaced colour tag with more fitting spoiler tag[/mod]

Hi rrc2soft,

thank you very much for this awesome remake. I didnīt know anything about the original game. (so also some thanks go to Nifflas and company)

Glad you liked it, and glad you discovered Nifflas games   .

Only had a few freezes while having played for way more than 10 hours, thank god there are always enough savepoints around. (can only confirm freezes on Gaia 1.5  right now [unripped maps, all sounds within sizelimit], about the other freezes, I donīt remember. But they mostly happened when entering the first screen to the left of a new story.)

Yup, the "first screen freeze"... I truly really don't know why that bug appears  . Fortunately, it does not happen very often.

How does uncompressing maps affect the gameplay?
- Does it load faster between screens?
and or
-Is it running more stable?
-Is there a way to save the setting of the options in an .ini-file or something? (when playing bigger stories like Gaia I always have to go to the options, to deactivate "uncompress maps", or wait once for about 4 hours :-))

Uncompressing maps (and pngs) makes the screen loading times *very* fast in comparison with the normal loading times. The stability of the engine is the same (theoretically...). And the ini file... just stored it as an issue to implement in 1.0a  .

am I right in my assumption, that the uncompressed maps/stories are stored in the "_RAW"-folder? (sooo, can I delete the particular content of this folder after having played through a specific story?)

Yes, you are right. Delete if you need the disk space  

I ate a mushroom and now I feel sTrAnGe SPOILER:

It happens to everyone that ate that ****** mushroom  

Spoiler: (click to show/hide)

I converted the sound into a .raw, sample rate 6000. It is still bigger than 1 mb but itīs working.
The screen with the 3 dudes sitting in the car is a bit choppy, and the screen with the many teleporters is also a pain in the as#. I suppose this is due to the poor Nintendo-hardware...
Now what really bugs me, is that the story freezes when Iīm on "nifflas Forum-page" jumping onto the "new topic" button. Am I the only one having this problem/Any suggestions?

The best configuration for the song is mp3, 11050, 16kbps. Use it and you should be able to play the whole story (I did).

Iīm going back to play Knytt Stories DS now...,  for the next couple of years.
THX for the effort and endurance man, you are awesome.

THX to you for playing it, and remember to try other Nifflas games

From the author of A Knytt in Time. I don't have a DS myself, but I was contacted by DS user:

Ive been trying a few times and have been reading the walkthrough and asking for directions to be able to get past the stage that you do to get the blue key, cant seem to get to the island becuase when I jump off and get as high as possible I get stopped by an invisible wall and end up falling into the water.

There are no invisible blocks in the sky. After, suggesting some possible solutions he came back with:

I am actually using the RccSoft port to the nintendo ds, the invisible wall isnt exactly so much an invisible wall but the edge of the map, when i glide I follow the map list to the right so instead of opening new blocks it just makes me slide down until I can reach the block below and continue my decent.

If voids are non-accessible in KSDS the he must be reaching the edge of the map. In the PC version this is not possible. It sounds to me like people can glide farther in KSDS than they can in the original. If this is the case, it will break a lot of games. I've advised people to hold the jump key down while gliding in the walkthrough. I believe this is what Man18 did.

^ I can tell you void screens are accessible, at least in my version. Actually, I can't jump that far at that point in the level; I can't reach the island though, maybe because I can't perform the second jump after I've glided onto the ascending currents (unless I'm supposed to make it without that).

If you can reach the up-drafts you should make it to the Island, double jumping is not necessary. There's actually a lot of leeway as long as you hold the jump key, at least there is on the PC. I don't know what the problem is with the DS version then.

If you can reach the up-drafts you should make it to the Island, double jumping is not necessary. There's actually a lot of leeway as long as you hold the jump key, at least there is on the PC. I don't know what the problem is with the DS version then.

Hmmm.... probably the problem lies in the "umbrella + air + jumping" mechanism. I'll take a look at it and try to develop a 1.0a that solves this problem. Sorry!  . Anyway, can you tell me screens where they problem may lie, so I can make some tests?

(BTW Offtopic: KSDS conquering the chinese market!  )

Starting from screen x989y964, you jump to the right, catch the winds with the Umbrella, then keep gliding to the right. I don't think I'm doing anything wrong when gliding, but I always end up falling into the water at x995y970, never reaching the next screen.

It's weird that in my version gliding gets closer than in the original, while in Man18's version it gets farther.

I made an image of how it's supposed to work. (see picture) I've highlighted the updrafts. The white line is my best jump without double jumping. The orange line is what happens when I run off the edge without jumping and never touch the jump button.

when I jump off I go right down wall down then it goes in a down right pattern that end up right after the water on the left with the porcupine and the no spiked animal in the little gap.

I checked to see if the 'wall' might be related to music loading (maybe it ignores input while this happens?) but the music doesn't start until you see the dock. It does change tilesets one screen above the surface.

If it is the updraft that is causing the trip to go haywire on the DS. I've tested and it is possible to double jump past the updraft, then open the umbrella, and make it to the boat. In other words, don't let the updraft touch the umbrella. If that bypasses the problem, then we'll know updrafts are the culprits.

Hi. I'm also not reaching the island. I think Man18 misunderstood the "invisible wall": because of the scrolling in KSDS falling in front of a constant-colored background looks like you're falling straight down instead of falling to the side.

So gliding in KSDS gets closer than in the original, and Man18, AA and I end up falling into the water.

So gliding in KSDS gets closer than in the original, and Man18, AA and I end up falling into the water.

My (main) computer just got fixed, so I'll try my best to do something about it.

with some stories (Gaia, Brent Land) the game freezes during the optimization. so i turned optimization off for Gaia, but then when i reach a particular spot, the game freezes everytime. you'll find this spot by starting at savepoint at X=1055, Y=1003 and jumping the next two screens upwards.

i tried to avoid both problems on several flash-cards (cyclo evolution, m3i zero, m3simply) and also tried the compatibility version with sound deactivated.

hopefully there is something that i or you can do about it

and btw: totally love the game & totally love playing it on my ds. so thanks for your awesome work


/edit:
another problem: maybe the jumping height is a little bit less than in the original game. In Fredrik Andersson's "Core", starting from savepoint at X=992, Y=1015 (after collecting the higher jumping ability on the left), going down and the next screen right, you cannot pass the gap (see attached picture).